Working with Save Dialog Boxes

Introduction: In this video, we’re going to take a closer look at dialog boxes on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Save Dialog Sheet: Let’s first take a look at a dialog box when we’re working on a document. This is where you traditionally see most dialog boxes. You need to save the document; you do it through a dialog box. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go over to numbers here, and we’re going to go and open up a new document. Let’s go with Charting Basics. I have this document here. Now, what I want to do is I want to save this. When I save it, what I get is a dialog box. The dialog box is going to be roughly the same no matter what app you’re in. Now let’s go and save this. I’m going to go up to file here, and we’re going to go to save. Of course, I can always use command-S as well.

Saving a Document: Now, I have my dialog box. Now, this is a simple dialog box. All I have to do with this is name it. We’re just going to call this Basic Charts. I can go and add tags, and then I decide where I want to save it. Once I do that, all I have to do is click on save.

Saving using the Blue Button: Now, I’m going to give you a little tip here. If you see a blue button, you do not have to click on it, and you can hit the return key. If I were to hit the return key, it saves this.

Detailed Save Sheet: Now, in addition to having a simple dialog box, I can also get a more detailed dialog box. To do that, what I do is I click on the down arrow. In most cases, when you go to a dialog box, it’ll be this more detailed dialog box. Now, what do I mean by detailed? Well, if we look, you’re going to see we have our sidebar on the left. I can go and select a folder just by clicking on the sidebar. If I wanted to save this to my desktop, I would click on the desktop. Then all I have to do is click on save. Again, I don’t have to click on save; all I have to do is hit the return key because it is blue.

Changing Views in a Save Sheet: You’re going to see up in the left here; I can go and change my view. Right now it is in a column view, click on this, and I can go and change it to a list view. Now we’re looking at a list view.

Viewing Recent Places in the Save Sheet: Now, I do not have any documents in here. Let’s take a look at my Documents Folder. When I go over to desktop here, I can also select from recent places. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go to macOS Mojave, and now I can go to documents. We can go into our different nested folders here. I double click on it, and now I’m in my documents folder. That’s how we can maneuver around within a dialog box. Once I have it selected where I want to save, again, I go down to save, or what I would do is I would just hit the return key. Now I’m going to hit the return key, and it just saved it to my Documents folder.

Moving Files: Let’s take a look at a different dialog box. We’re going to go and move this. In numbers, we can move our documents by going up to file, and then we go over to move, select it. We get a more simplified dialog box. All I can do is select a folder here. Now you’re going to notice that the move key is grayed out. Why is that? Well, that’s because this document is already in my Documents folder. What I need to do is I need to select a different folder where I want to move this document to. When I do that, I’ll be able to move the document. I click on this, and I select the folder I want to move it to.

Other Options: Now let’s say the folder wasn’t listed here, well then what we do is go down to Other. Remember how I clicked on that little arrow, and then I got a more detailed dialog box where I could see the sidebar? Well, that’s what this Other does. I select it. Now, we have our sidebar; we have our different options. Then we have our folder. I can even go and create a new folder by clicking on the New Folder button or going to New Folder here. I want to save this to my desktop.

I click on the desktop. Now, all I have to do is just hit the return key. When I hit the return key, being that this button is blue, I will perform this action. In this case, it’s going to move it. I’m going to hit return, and now we can see my file is on my desktop. Let’s move it back over to my documents through our menu. I go up to file again. I go over to move, and then all I have to do is select My Documents folder.

I’m going to select documents here. Now, I just hit the return key, and it’s going to move it. Now it’s back in my Documents folder. We’re going to take one other look at this. We’re going to go to my finder preferences.

Setting the Default Folder for Saving Documents: Click on Finder, and we go to preferences. We have our Finder preferences. Now I’m going to take a look at general here. In an earlier lesson, what I did is I set my Finder windows to show macOS Mojave by default. Now, anytime I open up a new finder window, instead of going to my recent files, which is where it goes by default, it’s going to show me my macOS Mojave folder. Well, let’s say I wanted to change this. I click on it, and I can select a different folder. If the folder isn’t listed here, what do I do? I go over to Other. When I select other, I get my dialog box. Then from here, I select the folder I want. Once I have the folder selected, all I have to do is just hit the return key, and when I hit the return key, it’s going to choose that folder.

That’s a closer look at the save dialog boxes on the Mac.